Powercolor has announced a new addition to its Devil series of Radeons, the Devil HD 7870. Designed to be in the same class as the previously released Devil 13, the new Devil HD 7870 features custom PCB and a decent factory-overclock.

As a part of the Devil series, Powercolor decided to equip the new Devil HD 7870 with its own Platinum Power kit that features 9-phase VRM, Digital PWM and Super capacitors in order to provide increased overall stability and reliable power delivery to the GPU. Like the Devil 13, the Devil HD 7870 also features a triple-fan cooler paired up wtih four heatpipes and large aluminum heatsink and should, according to Powercolor, be 25 percent cooler and 18 percent quieter when compared to the reference card.

The new Powercolor Devil HD 7870 ended up with 1100MHz GPU and 1250MHz (5.0GHz effective) memory clocks. It feature 2GB of GDDR5 memory paired up with a 256-bit memory interface. It features two DVI, HDMI and two mini-DisplayPort outputs.

Unfortunately, the precise price or the actual availability date have not been announced.

According to a rumor over at HT4U.net, AMD is apparently working on yet another Tahiti GPU, the Tahiti-LE.

The new GPU could help AMD fill a hole between the HD 7950 and HD 7870, thus putting much more pressure on Nvidia's GTX 660 Ti graphics card. According to the post over at HT4U.net, AMD apparently is looking to place the new GPU in the HD 7800 series rather than the HD 7900 series which is already crowded with five models.

Although there are still no precise details regarding the new GPU, AMD has enough room cut the Tahiti GPU down, most probably down to 1535 stream processors and even play with the memory interface. The new SKU, based on the Tahiti-LE GPU will most likely be ready by the Christmas shopping season.

Videocardz.com compiled a set of performance figures slide that puts the upcoming Geforce GTX 660 and the Geforce GTX 650 graphics cards against a couple of older Nvidia graphics cards as well as the AMD Radeon HD 7850 and the Radeon HD 7750.

Bear in mind that these figures are pretty much recompiled Nvidia performance slides that we seen before so a dash of salt is needed as these results are most likely the best case scenario. Of course, Nvidia generally wants the GTX 660 to compete against the Radeon HD 7870 and these two cards will be evenly matched in most scenarios, but it is always better to show that you can beat the competition, even on slides, thus you see it compared against the HD 7850. The same thing will probably happen with the GTX 650 as this one will most likely end up close to the HD 7770 but Nvidia slides put it against the HD 7750.

The slides show a set of games and in some cases the GTX 660 is anywhere between 15 and 60 percent faster than the HD 7850. Of course, the GTX 660 will not match the HD 7850 US $199.99 price tag and will most likely end up closer to the US $239.99 HD 7870 price tag so this comparison is rather useless. The same thing goes for the GTX 650, which ends up anywhere between 8 and 35 faster than the Radeon HD 7750 in a set of game benchmarks, but we honestly doubt that we will see it selling at US $99.99 Radeon HD 7750 price tag but rather somewhere closer to the US $119.99 Radeon HD 7770 price tag.

Of course, the prices of the upcoming GTX 660 and the GTX 650 graphics cards are not carved in stone and Nvidia can adjust them just a day before the launch so we will simply have to wait for September 13th.

Just as with the GTX 660 Ti, Tweaktown.com managed to get their hands on the upcoming GTX 660 (without any support from Nvidia, but we already know that story) from one of the AIB partners and publish a full review ahead of the official launch.

The upcoming GK106 based Nvidia GTX 660 has already been detailed including a performance level in Futuremark's 3DMark 11 and it appears that it actually performs identically to AMD's HD 7870. In case you missed it, the GTX 660 is based on Nvidia's 28nm GK106 GPU, features 960 CUDA cores, 980MHz base and 1033 Boost GPU clocks and comes with 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 6008MHz and paired up with a 192-bit memory interface.

According to our info, Nvidia actually places the GTX 660 as a direct competitor to the Radeon HD 7850 rather than the HD 7870, but we are yet to see a precise price other than sub-$300 price point. Currently, the HD 7870 GHz Edition can be found for as low as US $229.99 with rebate and GTX 660 will have a hard time to beat that price.

As noted, in most tests and games the performance ends up very close to the HD 7870. The GTX 660 is a pretty decent graphics card, at least according to this early review, but not a deal breaker, so it will eventually come down to the price. Of course, we will have to wait for the 12th of September as Nvidia can easily change the price at any point in time.

After the recent price cut back in July, that included a good US $50 price cut for HD 7970, HD 7950 and HD 7870 graphics cards, AMD has apparently decided to cut some of these prices even further taking the HD 7950 3GB graphics card down to US $320, or just in line with Nvidia's recently release GTX 660 Ti graphics card.

AMD has already dropped the HD 7970 from US $479 to US $429, HD 7950 from US $399 to US $349 and the HD 7870 down from US $349 to US $299. The new price cut skips the HD 7970 graphics card but includes the HD 7950, HD 7870 as well as the 1 and 2GB versions of the HD 7850.

The most important is probably the price cut for the 3GB HD 7950 which battles it out with Nvidia's recently released GTX 660 Ti. The HD 7950 3GB is, according to the report, will receive a US $30 price cut placing it at US $320. The HD 7870 2GB graphics card got another US $50 price cut pushing it down to US $250 which probably makes it one of the most interesting mid-range graphics cards on the market.

AMD also decided to drop price on 1 and 2GB version of the HD 7850 graphics card taking them down by US $40 to US $190 and US $210, respectively.

The competition is always good and for now, AMD has definitely rolled the ball to Nvidia's court.

It's news everyone likes to hear - price cuts, and AMD is set to slash HD 7970, HD 7950 and 7870 prices on Monday. Additionally, the company revealed that partners' interest in using HD 7970 GHz Editions for their special cards is at fault for the delay.

HD 7970 will be down $479 to $429 while HD 7950 cards will go for $349 instead of the earlier $399. HD 7870 will sell for $299 instead of $349, so it's a nice $50 cut for all these cards.

Apparently, XFX and Sapphire are expected to launch their iterations of the HD 7970 GHz Edition next week. The 7970 GHz Edition is expected to ship at 1GHz for the GPU and 6GHz for the memory, which is 75MHz and 500MHz higher, respectively, than on the HD 7970. The card comes with AMD's PowerTune that boost the card to 1050MHz.

The GHz Edition's performance is expected to bring about 10 percent overall advantage over the original HD 7970. The card's consumption isn't expected to be significantly higher, apparently due to the 28nm process improvements in TSMC, but it will be higher.

Sapphire has added yet another graphics card to its Flex lineup, the HD 7870 Flex Edition. Featuring support for up to four displays, the Flex Edition can do multiple screen Eyefinity without the need for expensive active DisplayPort adapters by simply using DVI and HDMI ports.

The new Sapphire HD 7870 Flex Edition supports up to four screens via two DVI, one HDMI and, of course, DisplayPort output. Spec wise, the HD 7870 Flex Edition is based on AMD's 28nm GCN architecture Pitcairn XT GPU with 1280 stream processors, works at 1000MHz for the GPU and feature 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1200MHz (4.8GHz effective) on a 256-bit memory interface.

The new HD 7870 Flex Edition is paired up with Sapphire's quite well known Dual-X Cooler that should keep the temps of the entire board well at bay. The new graphics card also features dual-BIOS and additional overclocking, voltage adjustment and fan speed control via Sapphire's TriXX software.

The new Sapphire HD 7870 Flex Edition is already listed in Europe with a price of around €320 depending on the region.

Although there has been a lot of talk regarding Asus' Ares dual HD 7870 graphics card, it appears that the project was axed even before it found its way to the headlines. It appears that the price was a main culprit behind the decision to axe this interesting card.

In case you missed it, the new Asus Ares was built around two 28nm Pitcairn XT GPUs in order to make it squeeze into the US $650-$800 range. Since a single Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition costs around US $350 the dual-GPU Ares was expected to hit that sweet spot. Unfortunately, the R&D, PCIe bridge chip and custom cooling would push a price all the way to US $800 and made it a rather bad price-per-performance card when compared to existing dual-GPU solutions or even pairing up two HD 7870 GHz Edition graphics cards in Crossfire.

Of course, Ares raised an eyebrow or two and some other partner might go the same way. Of course, the price has to be just right in order to make it happen.

Club3D has rolled out a new graphics card series, the PokerSeries that will represent Club3D's premiere lineup when it comes to graphics cards.

According to Club3D, the new PokerSeries will offer a new level of special graphics cards that deliver the best performance, newest features and best coolers. The new PokerSeries will be split into four different segments, the jokerCard, presenting Best of the Best Limited Edition, royalQueen with Best of the Best with Club3D's CoolStream cooling, royalKing with factory overclock and CoolStream, and royalAce, that will feature "super overclocking" with CoolStream cooling.

The first card that will have a chance to be a part of the PokerSeries is the HD 7870 JokerCard based on AMD's 28nm Pitcairn XT GPU with 1280 stream processors. This one ended up clocked at 1000MHz for the GPU, features 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 4800MHz and paired up with a 256-bit memory interface.

As noted in the feature list, the HD 7870 JokerCard will feature Club3D's quite good CoolStream cooler. On HD 7870 JokerCard, it packs three copper heatpipes paired up with a hefty heatsink and single center placed fan. The 7870 JokerCard will ship with DIRT Showdown game title voucher as a bonus. The new JokerCard is expected to hit retail during second week of May.

In addition to the JokerCard, Club3D has also shed some details on its RoyalKing and RoyalQueen cards that will be apparently featured in HD 7970, HD 7950, HD 7870 and HD 7850 versions, while RoyalAce cards are still left to be seen.

Pardon us for starting our review with a marketing slogan but it does a great job in describing Sapphire’s HD 7870 GHz OC Edition graphics card. The slogan says:

After an army-clear introduction, we’ll list a few details that work in the slogan’s favor. Radeon HD 7870 is a performance segment graphics card that uses Pitcairn XT GPU. This GPU runs at standard 1GHz although Sapphire threw in a 50MHz overclock. The GPU measures 212mm square and packs 2.8 billion transistors made in 28nm. So, we’re talking about AMD’s new generation of GPUs that belong to the Southern Islands series with Graphics Core Next architecture. Pitcairn GPU has 20 Compute Units, resulting in 1280 (1D) Shader units, 32 Raster Operation units (ROPs) and 80 texture units on a 256-bit memory interface.

HD 7870 packs 2GB of GDDR5 memory running at 1200MHz but Sapphire overclocked its card to 1250MHz. In short, the 7800 series should bring about 30 percent better performance than HD 6800 series.

What is of special interest to us here is the special cooling which, apart from the overclock, should attract users. Of course, the cooler should provide superior cooling even under big loads. We’re talking about the cooler used by Sapphire dual-extractor technology Dual-X. In other words, the cooler uses two silent fans and a sophisticated heatpipe system made of two 8mm and two 6mm heatpipes.

As usual, Sapphire’s virtual girl is there to spice things up. The cooler has two fans so there was no room for pictures on the card, but the box does look pretty.

Sapphire u ponudi ima dvije HD 7870 GHz Edition cards and if you’re looking for the faster one, you should look for the one with OC moniker (OverClock Edition). Both cards come with identical cooling and the price difference is only €8. The OC edition goes for €316 while the “plain” GHz version goes for €308.

Sapphire HD 7870 GHz Edition (OverClock Edition) is a dual slot graphics card that’s 25.4cm long. Sapphire used a blue PCB that’s typical of Sapphire but is still based on the reference design. The PCB itself is 24cm long but the cooler is slightly longer as you can see from the picture below.

It is interesting to see heatpipes on the bottom rather than at the top of the card. We presume that this improved dissipation since the aluminum heatsink goes almost to the top of the card, where there’s more fresh air. Whether heatpipes go downward or upward is irrelevant as long as the cooler does its job as it should. The fans are 8.5cm in diameter and our testing revealed that they are quiet. Both fans are connected to a single 4-pin power connector and RPM regulation is automatic. Naturally, you can use any tool such as CCC Overdrive to do manual control.

Lately we’ve seen increased use of 8mm pipes but 6mm ones are still considered standard for graphics. However, Sapphire combines thinner 6mm pipes in the middle of the heatsink with thicker 8mm pipes that must transfer heat to far edges of the heatsink.

The way heatpipes touch the heatsink is quite interesting. Heatpipes usually pass through heatsinks where they cannot be seen, but Dual-X’s heatpipes don’t fully enter the heatsink so we can see an entire side of the pipe. Contact pipes and aluminum fins on the heatsink are very tough and it seems as if the heatsink is better than the standard ones.

Quality cooling wouldn’t be complete without memory cooling. With that in mind, Dual-X cooler is equipped with special heatspreader that is curved on top of the card for better dissipation.

HD 7870 card features eight GDDR5 memory modules, each packing 256MB and totaling at 2048 on the card. A single 64-bit memory controller holds two memory chips, which means that HD 7870 has a 256-bit memory interface.

Some AMD partners decided on including an additional DVI out on HD 7870 cards but Sapphire stuck to the reference design with one dual-link DVI, two mini-DisplayPorts and a single standard HDMI out. However, Sapphire bundles a bunch of converters with the card – you get HDMI-to-DVI dongle, 1.8 meter long HDMI cable, mini-DisplayPort-to-DisplayPort dongle and one DVI-to-VGA dongle.

AMD’s HD 7000 series comes with support for multiple independent audio streams. HDMI 3D offers support for Deep Color, 7.1 High Bitrate Audio and 3D Stereoscopic. Doubling the effective bandwidth of previous DisplayPort implementations, DisplayPort 1.2 now includes support for Multi-Stream, allowing you to drive up to four separate monitors from a single DisplayPort 1.2 connector (requires DP1.2 monitors or Multi-Stream compatible hub), Stereoscopic 3D monitor support and adds support for high quality, lossless, 7.1 channel audio formats.

HD 7870 has a single Crossfire connector, meaning that an additional HD 7870 will help boost performance.

AMD’s reference card can draw up to 175W, but the two 6-pin connectors ensure that the card has 225W at its disposal. Although slightly overclocked, Sapphire’s card shouldn’t draw much more than the reference version.

Sapphire HD 7870 GHz OC Edition comes factory overclocked. The GPU and memory run at 1050MHz/1250MHz respectively, whereas reference clocks are at 1000MHz/1200MHz. We managed to hit 1150MHz GPU and 1420MHz for the memory.

Thermals, Noise and Power Consumption

Sapphire HD 7870 GHz OC Edition’s cooling turned out great – it’s quiet and does its job well. The fans are barely audible in idle mode, which was not surprising considering the heatsink size and the fact that it’s cooled by two fans at the same time. However, the cooler’s true strength showed when we stressed the card. Temperatures climbed up to 62°C, when the fans were still pleasantly quiet so we didn’t even notice them. Temperatures were about 5°C lower than on the reference HD 7870 but Sapphire’s card was much quieter. Our additional overclock increased temperature by 6°C but the fan didn’t speed up much so the card was still unobtrusive.

Sapphire launched its HD 7870 GHz OC Edition graphics card that’s aimed at serious gamers. Gaming at 1920x1080 is something that this card will chew up with ease while 2560x1600 will be playable in most games at highest settings. The HD 7870 card’s performance outweighs that of HD 6970. Since it comes with slightly higher clocks than the reference card, HD 7870 GHz OC Edition will provide slightly better performance as well.

The GPU runs at 1050MHz and we’re sure users prefer their cards cool while waging their “wars”. The Dual-extractor technology used by Sapphire is a formula that gives good results. Namely, although the card is overclocked, it still boasts lower temperatures than on the reference card. Furthermore, noise is an alien concept to this card and Sapphire’s HD 7870 GHz OC Edition remains quiet both when idle and when taken to the limit.

Sapphire HD 7870 GHz OC Edition goes for €316, which is about €30 steeper than the most affordable HD 7870, which again comes from Sapphire. Quality cooling and a factory overclock clearly show that Sapphire means business and the price difference between the reference card and Sapphire’s HD 7870 GHz OC Edition is a small price to pay for what you ultimately get – a cool and reliable companion.